


What The Water Gave Me

by Anonymous



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:02:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26193100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The first thing that strikes Fili is the endless depth of those impossibly dark eyes, like two pools lost in the wilderness.“You are safe here,” he says for something to say, but it doesn’t seem to help much with the expression of a prey caught in the net.
Relationships: Fíli/Kíli (Tolkien)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 30
Collections: GatheringFiKi - Secret Admirers 2020





	What The Water Gave Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Suxr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suxr/gifts).



> For Sugarsu.
> 
> Welcome to the fandom and thank you for all your beautiful fanart - it always evokes such perfect emotions. I can't explain how nice it is to see a new artist post fresh content so long after the films have premiered <3.
> 
> I could see this whole story unfolding in a series of images, and I think Kili might have gotten more than a bit influenced by the way you draw him. I hope this fits with how you see them and hits the spot. 
> 
> All the love and warmest of hugs!

At first, Fili thinks he’s found a body.

Half-dragged out of the water, completely naked and abandoned in a thick clump of tall reeds that make a home for themselves along the shores of the canal. Even its skin is olive-green, with irregular, darker patches, surely indicating some advanced stage of decay.

It wouldn’t be that surprising; like the rest of the boating community, Fili has heard the stories.

But when he gently prods it with his barge pole there’s a groan and a clumsy movement of a hand, clawing at the vegetation.

And so, without thinking, Fili pulls it on board of his narrow boat.

* * *

The guy sleeps for three days solid.

Curled up in a tangle of blankets on Fili’s narrow sofa, he offers no explanation, only obvious vulnerability.

Fili would take him to a hospital, but he doesn’t own a car and can’t imagine trying to transport the prone body on his bicycle.

Besides, the man doesn’t seem to sport any life-threatening injuries; only a few scrapes and bruises, and one deep gash, which, miraculously, neither bleeds nor festers.

The only thing that truly worries Fili is the colour of his skin: even cleared of the mud and silt, it remains, stubbornly, olive-green.

* * *

The first thing that strikes Fili is the endless depth of those impossibly dark eyes, like two pools lost in the wilderness.

“You are safe here,” he says for something to say, but it doesn’t seem to help much with the expression of a prey caught in the net.

* * *

“You’re not human, are you?”

It isn’t any one thing; he just looks out of place, sitting in Fili’s matchbox-sized kitchen, wearing his stretched Lewis t-shirt and a pair of shorts, awkwardly chasing the strands of spaghetti pasta in cauliflower cheese sauce all around his plate, seemingly unconcerned about where the collar has slipped down, revealing one moss-green shoulder.

He slowly shakes his head ‘no’.

“What are you then?”

Finished with his plate-full, but apparently not entirely done, he reaches for the other head of cauliflower and starts eating it raw.

“Rusalka,” he announces finally, cautiously watching for a reaction.

Fili has none for him, the word completely unfamiliar.

He ponders for a long moment, eventually coming up with a different name:

“Water nymph.”

* * *

He looks so utterly lost and alarmed out on the deck, that Fili can’t help but rush to explain.

“We must be past Coventry by now. I let the current carry us; didn’t seem safe staying in the area…”

His words have no effect. Instead his guest moves from starboard to port and back again, as if trying to orient himself by some other instinct.

“We can go back,” Fili offers. “It might take a while, but we could. Where do you need to be?”

The dark eyes regard him for a while with some helpless sadness.

Wordlessly, he simply shakes his head.

* * *

A water nymph dies, without a body of water to call its own.

And there are so few now.

Fewer still clean enough to actually inhabit; humans destroy every habitat.

And yet, here he is, with a human of his own, owing him his life.

The competition is fierce; the remaining ponds, stretches of rivers, streams, even canals, constantly attacked and desperately defended.

He’s lost his home four times before.

He was always lucky enough to find some smaller patch, somewhere even more remote, where he could establish himself and cling to his powers.

This time, though…

He fought with all he had, but the intruder was too strong, incredulous almost to have been reduced to claiming the sleepy waterway.

He’s surprised to be alive, after being left to die on the very edges of his territory.

But then he doesn’t harbour many hopes.

A water nymph dies, without a body of water to call its own.

* * *

“What’s your name?”

To give it will make him a slave to the one who wields it.

But he knows the laws, the ancient laws of nature, that demand this and more, for the sacred gift of life, however fleeting.

“Kili,” he whispers and his voice is like a sigh of the wind.

* * *

Slowly, little by little, Fili gathers his facts.

Kili doesn’t eat meat.

He does eat fish, but only freshwater, and vegetables, preferably raw.

Cucumbers are his favourite, devoured in a single sitting, like one might eat an apple.

He approves of plants in general, and of the little potted garden Fili keeps on the bow of his narrow boat in particular.

Somehow, he becomes fast friends with Fili’s tomatoes.

He drinks more than an ordinary person, but only water. He’s not particularly fussy if that water comes from a tap, a bottle, or the canal itself, with that last one often becoming his beverage of choice, no matter how well-supplied Fili tries to keep him.

Clothes are optional, particularly if it’s warm.

Rain is his absolute favourite weather.

He likes to nap through the day’s hottest hours, but stays awake long into the night.

The boat’s engine, as well as most of its mechanical parts, are the devil, to be exorcised with fierce glares and quiet hisses. He seems relieved when Fili explains that his diesel packed up several years ago, and he’s been mostly using the barge pole ever since.

And he learns really fast, within days capable of steering the boat at least as well as Fili, as if he’s lived on the water all his life.

* * *

It takes an alarmingly short amount of time for Kili to start believing in his human’s earliest words.

He _does_ feel safe, even though he knows he shouldn’t.

Maybe, he thinks, it’s the easy access to water.

Or maybe it’s because Fili refuses to use him; no cruel commands that would deplete what minimal reserves he has left to give, no impossible wishes or physical demands. At most, he uses his name to summon him from time to time, and even then it’s usually to ask or to offer something.

Or maybe, and that’s the most baffling part, because he’s offered his own name in return, immediately after learning Kili’s.

* * *

The general consensus is that Kili knows English, but chooses not to use it.

Instead he has a language of his own, which he employs often, completely unconcerned that his human understands none of it.

Everything else seems to understand it just fine.

Frogs, his greatest friends and allies, come out in numbers, whenever he starts his trilling, melodic monologues. Birds call out in response, following after the barge from branch to branch, for miles on end. Dragonflies hover patiently just above deck, as if listening to what he has to say.

Even pets.

Fili watches his nymph sitting cross-legged on the mooring of the marina, surrounded by no less than _three_ local cats, having what can only be described as a full-blown _conversation_. The cats meow, Kili chatters, trills and chirps and a good time seems to be had by all.

It cannot be said that Fili is excluded from these delights. Kili chatters at him just the same, helping himself with gestures and expressions to let his sentiments be known.

It’s almost as if he treats him like one of nature’s less capable creatures – to be approached with patience and educated, instead of adopting its own ways.

* * *

It’s a warm, relaxed kind of day and the boat moves almost soundlessly, carried by the gentle current.

Kili is sprawled right along the side of the bow, watching the familiar scenery sail past them, and the way the sun flickers playfully on the surface, creating a myriad of reflections, especially if they happen to go under a bridge.

He feels content, with one arm draped over the edge and two fingers dipped into the water to leave waves of his own, lazily, almost without thinking, drawing power from his element.

He notices her from a mile off: dark eyes, hidden in the thickest of vegetation along the shore, watching him, seething, radiating hostility and resentment.

He’s in her territory.

Kili watches her right back, slowly, oh so slowly going past her hiding spot, one set of eyes locked on the other, ostensibly continuing to take his fill.

No Rusalka will ever openly go against a Destroyer.

It’s as if the boat is his own floating sanctuary: full of human life and odd, unfamiliar ways, but keeping him constantly tethered to the water, allowing him not only to survive, but also to gradually recover.

“I know what you are,” Fili offers cheerfully, watching him thoughtfully from where he’s propped up against the cabin with his laptop, dangling one foot in the water, staking his own claim. “I’ve worked it all out.”

Kili has almost forgotten he was there.

“You’re a water cat!” his human announces triumphantly, as if Kili hadn’t already told him what he was. “It all figures: the need to do things your own way, favourite sunny spots, a bit of posturing –“

Kili only scoffs, before flopping back down between the flower pots.

If he had a tail, its very tip would be flicking back and forth.

* * *

Like the water itself, Kili is never static.

His skin often changes colour: from olive-green, to the more pronounced and saturated shades of young grass, lush moss and dark pine. From time to time it pales to more earthy tones, the green seeping away, until some days he could almost pass for someone with a strong tan.

His eyes aren’t always eternal pools of endless darkness. Some days they turn out to be brown. In direct sun they’re almost chestnut-coloured. In wooded areas they acquire little flecks of gold and emerald, as if claiming shades from all around them.

His hair, once completely black and slick like otter’s fur, turns out to be soft and wavy and more the colour of rich, dark chocolate.

His teeth can be very white and sharp, sort of pointy-looking. Other times they seem to dull and look perfectly human.

Even his nails: ordinarily rounded and closely trimmed, and yet there are times when Fili could swear he can see short, sharp claws and a faint webbing between his fingers.

He supposes he should be more alarmed about living with the supernatural than he is. But regardless of how Kili looks, he acts in ways Fili can understand and respond to, ways that call out to his heart.

He probably likes to think of himself as ‘wild’, but Fili isn’t so sure.

Not wishing to entrap him, he offers to take him – somewhere. Anywhere he likes. If not ‘home’, then maybe to see his family?

But it only ever seems to cause the same quiet sadness, so after a while Fili stops offering.

* * *

Slowly, gradually, like a gentle current taking him towards the rapids, a sense of betrayal sneaks into Kili’s life.

In all his years, he’s never thought he needed…. _this_.

Companionship. Presence. Closeness. Even that stupid, fast heartbeat that a human has.

He was solitary and he was _fine_.

Wasn’t he?

He likes the evenings, when Fili puts on stories on the screen and lets him curl up close. He likes the hand that moves through his hair without any real purpose, if he slips down into Fili’s lap.

He likes watching him when he cooks, doing savage things to perfectly good food, to make it palatable for himself.

He likes the sounds of snores, a bit like frogs on summer evenings.

He likes the days, those chaotic ones, when Fili seems to feel some great disturbance and taps away on his laptop for hours on end, leaving Kili to water their plants and steer their boat and bring him food. He likes the peace in his eyes when he’s done.

He likes the looks, and being in the centre of somebody’s attention, which is such a counter-intuitive and outrageous concept that he finds himself wondering if he’s getting sick.

And he likes that thing he feels in his chest: warm and vulnerable, settled and unsettling, dependent but free, all of it centred, ridiculously, like a vortex, around the blond man he’d been taught to hate.

* * *

It’s raining cats and dogs, so of course Kili is outside.

In fact, going by the noises coming from above, he’s commandeered the entire roof of the cabin, where he will no doubt be spreadeagled, with as little clothing as possible, getting as wet as he can.

Fili meanwhile is trying to work; he may be freelance, but screenplays don’t write themselves.

Problem is, he can’t seem to focus. He needs –

Not food. Not drink. Not any of a number of different positions and spots he tries to settle in.

Eventually he huffs and abandons all pretenses of being productive. What is life, if you never do anything crazy?

Kili looks up when he climbs outside, watches him for a moment, but doesn’t comment. He also doesn’t protest when Fili carefully makes his way around the side of the cabin to mirror his position symmetrically across the roof.

If anyone was walking along the canal despite the horrendous weather today, they would have a view to behold.

But there is no-one.

No-one to see Kili eventually get bored with keeping the roof dry and move to settle down among Fili’s potted garden.

No-one to see Fili follow him, sit by his side, or reach out an arm to wrap it around his cool shoulders and pull him close.

No-one to see Kili lean in closer still, tilt his head, watch his eyes and then, very deliberately, his lips.

Fili hovers a single breath away, not sure if he might be taken as entitled, if he’s allowed such a thing, if perhaps he’s read this whole situation horribly wrong –

It’s Kili who closes the distance and makes his feelings abundantly clear.

* * *

Of course, Fili gets sick.

Somewhere among the aches and pains and the raging fever, he remembers cool hands, pressing at his chest and drawing something out of it. He remembers wracking coughs that follow and a guilty look in those endlessly dark eyes.

* * *

It’s some four months before they happen to stumble across that one sleepy section of the canal.

Fili knows, because Kili freezes, eyes locked on the landscape before them, as if scanning for danger.

At that moment he realises that there is only one thing he can say:

“Go.”

Kili throws him a look, unreadable and ancient from the eyes like the depth itself, among the skin the colour of duckweed.

And then he’s gone, the water closing over him, as if he never existed.

Somewhere far up ahead something stirs and splashes, and wild birds take flight.

* * *

Fili waits until the sunrise.

When there is nothing but the sounds of a dawn in the wilderness, he reaches for the ropes.

“Stay.” Otter-slick and barely out of the water, but there, looking at him expectantly.

“You came back!” Fili throws himself against the starboard, heart hammering in his chest.

“You waited,” Kili replies, soundlessly moving closer.

For a moment he looks like he might just climb aboard, like he’s done dozens of times before, but for now he chooses to stay within his own element.

“Stay,” he repeats impatiently. “Throw down your metal in this water. I made you a space. _Stay_.”

And Fili, who for years has only known how to move forward, how to wake up in a brand new place every day, says: “I’ll stay.”

* * *


End file.
